CHAPTER VI
SCHOOL
In one of the pleasantest valleys of sweet Somersetshire stands a largered-brick house that bears unmistakably impressed on its exterior thetitle "School." You would not take it for a "hall," or an hospital, oran almshouse, or anything in the world but an institution for the risinggeneration, in which the ways of the wide world are so successfullyimitated that, in the qualities of foresight, cunning, duplicity, andgeneral selfishness, the boy may indeed be said to be "father to theman." The house stands on a slope towards the south, with a trim lawnand carefully-kept gravel drive, leading to a front door, of which thesteps are always clean and the handles always bright. How a ring atthat door-bell used to bring all our hearts into our mouths. Forty boyswere we, sitting grudgingly over our lessons on the bright summerforenoons, and not one of us but thought that ring might possiblyannounce a "something" for him from "home." Home! what was there in theword, that it should call up such visions of happiness, that it shouldcreate such a longing, sickening desire to have the wings of a dove andflee away, that it should make the present such a blank and comfortlessreality? Why do we persist in sending our children so early to school?A little boy, with all his affections developing themselves, loving andplayful and happy, not ashamed to be fond of his sisters, and thinkingmamma all that is beautiful and graceful and good, is to be torn fromthat home which is to him an earthly Paradise, and transferred to aplace of which we had better not ask the urchin his own private opinion.We appeal to every mother--and it is a mother who is best capable ofjudging for a child--whether her darling returns to her improved in hereyes after his first half-year at school. She looks in vain for thepliant, affectionate disposition that a word from her used to becapable, of moulding at will, and finds instead a stubbornself-sufficient spirit that has been called forth by harsh treatment andintercourse with the mimic world of boys; more selfish and moreconventional, because less characteristic than that of men. He isimpatient of her tenderness now, nay, half ashamed to return it.Already he aspires to be a man, in his own eyes, and thinks it manly tomake light of those affections and endearments by which he once set suchstore. The mother is no longer all in all in his heart, her empire isdivided and weakened, soon it will be swept away, and she sighs for thewhite-frock days when her child was fondly and entirely her own. Now, Icannot help thinking the longer these days last the better. Anxiousparent, what do you wish your boy to become? A successful man in afterlife?--then rear him tenderly and carefully at first. You would not bita colt at two years old; be not less patient with your own flesh andblood. Nature is the best guide, you may depend. Leave him to the womentill his strength is established and his courage high, and when themetal has assumed shape and consistency, to the forge with it as soon asyou will. Hardship, buffetings, adversity, all these are good for the_youth_, but, for Heaven's sake, spare the _child_.
Forty boys are droning away at their tasks on a bright sunshiny morningin June, and I am sitting at an old oak desk, begrimed and splashed withthe inkshed of many generations, and hacked by the knives of idler afteridler for the last fifty years. I have yet to learn by heart some twoscore lines from the AEneid. How I hate Virgil whilst I bend over thosedog's-eared leaves and that uncomfortable desk. How I envy the whitebutterfly of which I have just got a glimpse as he soars away into theblue sky--for no terrestrial objects are visible from our schoolroomwindow to distract our attention and interfere with our labours. I havealready accompanied him in fancy over the lawn, and the garden, and thehigh white-thorn fence into the meadow beyond,--how well I know the deepglades of that copse for which he is making; how I wish I was on my backin its shadow now. Never mind, to-day is a half-holiday, and thisafternoon I will spend somehow in a dear delicious ramble through thefairy-land of "out of bounds." The rap of our master's cane against hisdesk--a gentlemanlike method of awakening attention and assertingauthority--startles me from my day-dream. "March," for we drop the Mr.prefixed, in speaking of our pedagogue, "March is a bit of a Tartar, andI tremble for the result."
"Egerton to come up."
Egerton goes up accordingly, with many misgivings, and embarks, like adesperate man, on the loathed _infandum Regina jubes_.
The result may be gathered from March's observations as he returns methe book.
"Not a line correct, sir; stand down, sir; the finest passage of thepoet shamefully mangled and defaced; it is a perfect disgrace toEverdon. Remain in till five, sir; and repeat the whole lesson to Mr.Manners."
"Please, sir, I tried to learn it, sir; indeed I did, sir."
"Don't tell me, sir; _tried_ to learn it, indeed. If it had been Frenchor German, or--or any of these useless branches of learning, you wouldhave had it by heart fast enough; but Latin, sir, Latin is thefoundation of a gentleman's education; Latin you were sent here toacquire, and Latin, sir" (with an astounding rap on the desk), "you_shall_ learn, or I'll know the reason why."
I may remark that March, though an excellent scholar, professed uttercontempt for all but the dead languages.
I determined to make one more effort to save my half-holiday.
"Please, sir, if I might look over it once more, I could say it when thesecond class goes down; please, sir, won't you give me another chance?"
March was not, in schoolboy parlance, "half a bad fellow," and he didgive me another chance, and I came up to him once more at the conclusionof school, having repeated the whole forty lines to myself withoutmissing a word; but, alas! when I stood again on the step which led upto the dreaded desk, and gave away the book into those uncompromisinghands, and heard that stern voice with its "Now, sir, begin," myintellects forsook me altogether, and while the floor seemed to rockunder me, I made such blunders and confusion of the chief's oration tothe love-sick queen, as drove March to the extremity of that very shorttether which he was pleased to call his "patience," and drew upon myselfthe dreaded condemnation I had fought so hard to escape.
"Remain in, sir, till perfect, and repeat to Mr. Manners, without amistake--Mr. Manners, you will be kind enough to see, _without amistake_! Boys!" (with another rap of the cane) "school's up." Marchlocks his desk with a bang, and retires. Mr. Manners puts on his hat.Forty boys burst instantaneously into tumultuous uproar, forty pairs offeet scuffle along the dusty boards, forty voices break into song andjest and glee, forty spirits are emancipated from the prison-house intofreedom and air and sunshine--forty, all save one.
So again I turn to the _infandum Eegina Jubes_, and sit me down and cry.
I had gone late to school, but I was a backward child in everything savemy proficiency in modern languages. I had never known a mother, and thelittle education I had acquired was picked up in a desultory manner hereand there during my travels with my father, and afterwards in a gloomyold library at Alton Grange, his own place in the same county as Mr.March's school. My father had remained abroad till his affairs made itimperative that he should return to England, and for some years we livedin seclusion at Alton, with an establishment that even my boyishpenetration could discover was reduced to the narrowest possible limits.I think this was the idlest period of my life. I did no lessons, unlessmy father's endeavour to teach me painting, an art that I showed yearafter year less inclination to master, could be called so. I had butfew ideas, yet they were very dear ones. I adored my father; on him Ilavished all the love that would have been a mother's right; and havingno other relations--none in the world that I cared for, or that caredfor me, even nurse Nettich having remained in Hungary--my father wasall-in-all. I used to wait at his door of a morning to hear him wake,and go away quite satisfied without letting him know. I used to watchhim for miles when he rode out, and walk any distance to meet him on hisway home. To please him I would even mount a quiet pony that he hadbought on purpose for me, and dissemble my terrors because I saw theyannoyed my kind father. I was a very shy, timid, and awkward boy,shrinking from strangers with a fear that was positively
painful, andliking nothing so well as a huge arm-chair in the gloomy oak wainscotedlibrary, where I would sit by the hour reading old poetry, old plays,old novels, and wandering about till I lost myself in a world of my owncreating, full of beauty and romance, and all that ideal life which wemust perforce call nonsense, but which, were it reality, would make thisearth a heaven. Such was a bad course of training for a boy whosedisposition was naturally too dreamy and imaginative, too deficient inenergy and practical good sense. Had it gone on I must have become amadman; what is it but madness to live in a world of our own? I shallnever forget the break-up of my dreams, the beginning, to me, of hardpractical life.
I was coiled up in my favourite attitude, buried in the depths of a hugearm-chair in the library, and devouring with all my senses and all mysoul the pages of the _Morte d'Arthur_, that most voluminous and leastinstructive of romances, but one for which, to my shame be it said, Iconfess to this day a sneaking kindness. I was gazing on QueenGuenever, as I pictured her to myself, in scarlet and ermine and pearls,with raven hair plaited over her queenly brow, and soft violet eyes,looking kindly down on mailed Sir Launcelot at her feet. I was holdingArthur's helmet in the forest, as the frank, handsome, stalwart monarchbent over a sparkling rill and cooled his sunburnt cheek, and laved hischestnut beard, whilst the sunbeams flickered through the green leavesand played upon his gleaming corslet and his armour of proof. I wasfeasting at Camelot with the Knights of the Round Table, jesting withSir Dinadam, discussing grave subjects of high import with Sir Gawain,or breaking a lance in knightly courtesy with Sir Tristram and Sir Bore;in short, I was a child at a spectacle, but the spectacle came and went,and grew more and more gorgeous at will. In the midst of my dreams inwalked my father, and sat down opposite the old arm-chair.
"Vere," said he, "you must go to school."
The announcement took away my breath: I had never, in my wildestmoments, contemplated such a calamity.
"To school, papa; and when?" I mustered up courage to ask, clinging likea convict to the hope of a reprieve.
"The first of the month, my boy," answered my father, rather bullyinghimself into firmness, for I fancy he hated the separation as much as Idid; "Mr. March writes me that his scholars will reunite on the first ofnext month, and he has a vacancy for you. We must make a man of you,Vere; and young De Rohan, your Hungarian friend, is going there too.You will have lots of playfellows, and get on very well, I have nodoubt; and Everdon is not so far from here, and--and--you will be verycomfortable, I trust; but I am loth to part with you, my dear, andthat's the truth."
I felt as if I could have endured martyrdom when my father made thisacknowledgment. I could do anything if I was only coaxed and pitied alittle; and when I saw he was so unhappy at the idea of our separation,I resolved that no word or look of mine should add to his discomfort,although I felt my heart breaking at the thoughts of bidding himgood-bye and leaving the Grange, with its quiet regularity and peacefulassociations, for the noise and bustle and discipline of a large school.Queen Guenever and Sir Launcelot faded hopelessly from my mental vision,and in their places rose up stern forms of harsh taskmasters andsatirical playfellows, early hours, regular discipline, Latin and Greek,and, worst of all, a continual bustle and a life in a crowd.
There were two peculiarities in my boyish character which, more than anyothers, unfitted me for battling with the world. I had a morbid dreadof ridicule, which made me painfully shy of strangers. I have on manyan occasion stood with my hand on the lock of a door, dreading to enterthe room in which I heard strange voices, and then, plunging in with adesperate effort, have retired again as abruptly, covered withconfusion, and so nervous as to create in the minds of the astonishedguests a very natural doubt as to my mental sanity. The otherpeculiarity was an intense love of solitude. I was quite happy with myfather, but if I could not enjoy his society, I preferred my own to thatof any other mortal. I would take long walks by myself--I would sit forhours and read by myself--I had a bedroom of my own, into which I hatedeven a servant to set foot--and perhaps the one thing I dreaded morethan all besides in my future life was, that I should never, never, be_alone_.
How I prized the last few days I spent at home; how I gazed on all thewell-known objects as if I should never see them again; how the verychairs and tables seemed to bid me good-bye like old familiar friends.I had none of the lively anticipations which most boys cherish of themanliness and independence arising from a school-life; no long vista ofcricket and football, and fame in their own little world, withincreasing strength and stature, to end in a tailed coat, and evenwhiskers! No, I hated the idea of the whole thing. I expected to bemiserable at Everdon, and, I freely confess, was not disappointed.